


Not Even The Gods Above

by snuggleharry



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Original Mythology, There will be violence, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, War, fictional dystopia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:45:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1882134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snuggleharry/pseuds/snuggleharry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is nothing clearer in Altar than the line drawn between the rich -wealthy merchants, knighted men of foul souls, monarchs and, above all, Gods- and the people turned prisoners and slaves. Nothing coexists between the two stages of hierarchy, no values are shared, but Altar had always been that way. That is, until a God, one that definitely should not have been the one to unbalance everything, did the only thing he knew well and fought. But this time, he had a reason, and the reason made him fight until nothing was the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Even The Gods Above

**Author's Note:**

> still working hard on this! i have so many ideas that i have to sort through first though, which might resort in a minor brain fart (if you don't mind the expression that is very applicable in this case)

Altar was a hideous place. The endless greens of the valleys and heights of the mountains, reaching from every way you looked,  waters so blue even the ocean wasn't bottomless, and skies always changing from pink, to purple, to orange and back, were no veil to the cruel people who resided within them. They had all been bred to want and want and  _want_ , crushing whatever and whomever stood in their path to glory. Glory was defined by heartlessness, constant success, and riches. It was terrifying, seeing that look of pure depravity in the eyes of a soldier gliding his blade through the chest of another, one he had been talking with mere days before, to impress his Gods. 

Everything, all thoughts passing through the minds of men,  _everything_ , was done for the Gods. Selling your child to slavery to be able to briefly walk through the Common Hall on Mount Ohm, murdering nearly extinct creatures for their furs and teeth to gift to the Goddess of Beauty, accepting to fight in a war that assures nothing more than death, only to momentarily stand at the ranks of the God of War.

The Gods were the cruelest. In ancient times, there were sealed to Altar to protect and transcend peace, but with that came too many responsibilities, too much bad to fight, so they turned black inside and revoked their obligations and became just what they wanted men to avoid. Those at the time who had been rich providers to the Gods were given everything they needed in the High City, just at the base of Mount Ohm, and all the rest were cast aside, captured as prisoners and slaves by their own divinities.

The years that followed were engraved with sharp knives in the minds of every person chained to wooden posts and tortured, and of every person who saw their family slaughtered in front of their eyes. The streets of every city were lined with decaying heads hanging from trees and screwed on spears, and it had seemed that the year following, as things seemed to lessen, no one spoke.

Well, Jorah hadn't spoken. Not to the merchant he was bought by, not even to the Gods' Warriors when they grabbed him as he was pulling rotting potatoes out in the crops and threatened to cut his tongue. The scar on his cheek was what he got instead, though. They gave his owner a simple silver coin and then tied Jorah to a line of slaves. They were all men, and they were strong and healthy; Jorah knew that he was going to die. Whether it be in the war, or by being slowly killed from exhaustion and dehydration by building impossible towers in impossible time limits, he knew he was going to die.

They walked for two days with nothing but a few drops of water splashed onto their faces by the warriors who reveled in their desperate pleads. Jorah didn't say a word.

At the gate to the Common Hall, they were thrown to their knees. One man refused, a brave soul who yelled and spat on the shoes of the warrior in front of him.

Jorah shut his eyes and clenched his teeth as he heard the all too familiar sound of metal and flesh.

"You see that boys? That's what happens if you even dare to look me in the eyes. Take it as a warning, or, for some of you, I'd take it as the only way out of Hell."

They were divided into two groups: those who fought and those who built. They listed him as a blacksmith, and was put to work immediately. The army was running out of weapons, too many were dying because their armor was nothing less than a piece of metal smashed and bashed in haste. He was mentored by Graham, an elderly man who seemed near death each time he swung his hammer, but he had more life in him than most Jorah had seen. Graham spoke to him constantly, giving advice and laughing to himself then and again. It hadn't taken him long to realize he wouldn't get an answer.

He developed a skill he hadn't known he had, and soon enough his pieces were strong enough to be strapped to the backs of soldiers and handled to kill enemies. Although he still couldn't determine who the enemy was.

Three years passed before he was able to leave the rundown smithy, and that for the mere reason he was transferred to the one in High City. With a sad pat on the shoulder from Graham, Jorah left with all he had: the clothes on his back. And a dagger crafted in the purest steel he could steal tucked away in his boot.

The journey lasted a half and a day, riding in the back of a horse-drawn wagon packed to its limits with slaves and prisoners.

The city was something he had never thought he would see, but it was exactly as any of his kind would imagine it; three leagues they crossed through desolate towns wrung with poverty and famine riding all the way up to the fortress walls encircling the city from its western point around the mountain, all the way to its limits high up in the east of Mount Ohm. The doors, tall as, he guessed, thirty men, glided open as they pulled up before them and guards lined up on either side of the wagon and guided it up the winding streets of the city.

Richly decorated was each house, shop and person in golds and royal blues, colours that Jorah had never before seen except for the gold of the warriors breast plates. Children ran from alley to alley, poking out their round heads to glimpse at the odd people entering their city. He couldn't remember the last time he had seen a child whose bones didn't protrude from its skin, or one who laughed as much as these did. It was an incessant joyous rumble that was heard everywhere. Everyone seemed so... untroubled.

Had they never seen what was on the other side of the wall? Jorah asked himself. They must know, they must be aware that their life is only this pleasant due to the suffering of thousands!

He focused on his white knuckles for the short time remaining of the journey as a way to forget how frustrated he felt.

Halfway up the winding stone drive of Mount Ohm, the guards removed almost every passenger, handing them over to another armed group, seemingly knights, who pushed them under an archway into a dirty piece of land that didn't look like anything else in the High City. The two left, Jorah and a man of white hair and piercing blue eyes, traveled right to the zenith of the mountain. Looking out from the metal bars of the wagon, he couldn't help but admire a place where he was treated as a hitch below nothing since his birth. The roofs shone so bright an almost silver hue they rivaled the rivers of Camien; the trees stood taller and greener than any tale had told. From there, he could see the ocean of Psyr stretching so far south it never joined the horizon.

He avoided looking too long at the desert beyond the great wall where the stench of death was almost palpable. 

It was beautiful, the blue then brown then blue again, but it was transfixing and impossibly cruel.

"Take that view in boy, I think this will be the last time you and I will get to see it," said the man with a sigh. 

Jorah looked at the sky, and from that day that was what he remembered as his last chance of somehow brushing against the closest thing he could call freedom.

Through three consecutive gates they rode, each barrier thicker and stronger than the other, until at last they halted before a castle so enormous and frighteningly intimidating. Jorah counted eight floors between the ground and roof of the main building, built of grey marble polished so bright it hurt his eyes. The castle climbed, like every other structure in the High City, up the mountain, gaining a floor after every fifteen meters. From all four corners of the fortress protruded towers of marble, these white as bone, topped by trees of orange and pink flowers that lazily let their branches hang down and off the parapet. Each was guarded by five men standing immobile and erect like the towers themselves.

Further behind the main building stood another built into the head of Mount Ohm, slightly lesser in height but longer, made entirely of gold. He guessed this to be the residence of the Gods, for nothing was more rich or beautiful than it. Pillars were strung with vines, and out of each window flowed beds of flowers one might have thought went extinct thousands of years ago. 

The man with the blue eyes put a hand on his shoulder.

"If you stand completely still, you'd've thought we were dead and gone straight up to Paradise." He laughed to himself, then a guard struck his back, making him fall to his knees.

"Beyond those doors them mouths o'yours stay shut. Now move your filthy asses," said the guard, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for taking the time to read my work, you guys are sick .xx


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